International agricultural commodity trade is central to the livelihoods of millions of farmers across the globe, and to most countries' food security strategies. Yet global trade policies are ...contributing to food insecurity and are undermining livelihoods. Food Sovereignty emerged in part as the articulation of resistance to the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) and the imposition of multilateral trade disciplines on domestic agriculture policy. While not explicitly rejecting trade, the food sovereignty movement is identified with a strong preference for local markets. It challenges existing international trade structures, and on the whole its official position on trade remains ambiguous. We argue that trade remains important to the realization of the livelihoods of small-scale producers, including peasants active in the Food Sovereignty movement. It also matters for food security. That it remains underexplored by the movement risks marginalizing millions of smallholder producers, and risks overlooking opportunities to shape trade rules along more food sovereign lines. The authors suggest further development of the movement's position on trade is strategically important.
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BFBNIB, NUK, PILJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Red blood cells (RBCs) are essential for aerobic respiration through delivery of oxygen to distant tissues. However, RBCs are currently considered immunologically inert, and few, if any, secondary ...functions of RBCs have been identified. Here, we showed that RBCs serve as critical immune sensors through surface expression of the nucleic acid–sensing Toll-like receptor 9 (TLR9). Mammalian RBCs expressed TLR9 on their surface and bound CpG-containing DNA derived from bacteria, plasmodia, and mitochondria. RBC-bound mitochondrial DNA was increased during human and murine sepsis and pneumonia. In vivo, CpG-carrying RBCs drove accelerated erythrophagocytosis and innate immune activation characterized by increased interferon signaling. Erythroid-specific deletion of TLR9 abrogated erythrophagocytosis and decreased local and systemic cytokine production during CpG-induced inflammation and polymicrobial sepsis. Thus, detection and capture of nucleic acid by TLR9-expressing RBCs regulated red cell clearance and inflammatory cytokine production, demonstrating that RBCs function as immune sentinels during pathologic states. Consistent with these findings, RBC-bound mitochondrial DNA was elevated in individuals with viral pneumonia and sepsis secondary to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and associated with anemia and severity of disease. These findings uncover a previously unappreciated role of RBCs as critical players in inflammation distinct from their function in gas transport.
•COVID-19 has exposed interconnected weaknesses of food, social and economic systems.•Levels of food insecurity have increased by 83-132 million people mainly due to food access disruptions and ...exacerbated poverty.•Those who are food insecure are more likely to suffer from health conditions that cause more severe symptoms of COVID-19.•Food workers are essential but are treated as sacrificial, with racialized migrant food workers facing unique inequities.•Addressing these inequities are not only what is just, it is what is necessary to promote resilience to future shocks.
Food systems are important sites of economic stress, political response and adaptation. Access to food is also an important marker of how well a society distributes its wealth, reflecting the state of political accountability, economic redistribution, and the society’s level of commitment to uphold the right to food. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the interconnected weaknesses of our food, social and economic systems and offers lessons for building more just and resilient food systems. We focus on three lessons learned anew in the pandemic: (1) food insecurity both reflects and reinforces inequity, (2) food workers are essential yet treated as sacrificial, and (3) racialized migrant food workers face unique forms of inequity. These lessons – chosen for their ethical salience, global relevance, and political urgency – show how interconnected inequities revealed by the pandemic are undermining resilience. We conclude with specific policy recommendations for redress, both within and beyond food systems. This will not be the final global pandemic, nor is it the only shock that regions are currently experiencing. COVID-19 is an opening to think about how societies might center justice and equity in efforts to build back better. Governments should take this opportunity to invest in structural changes to reduce persistent inequities in food access due to poverty, health outcomes, decent work and overall wellbeing, especially for racialized communities and migrants.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Obesity has reached epidemic proportions, in the United States as well as among its trade partners such as Mexico. It has been established that an "obesogenic"�(obesity-causing) food environment is ...one influence on obesity prevalence. To isolate the particular role of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, in changing Mexico's food environment, we plotted the flow of several key products between the United States and Mexico over the 14-year NAFTA period (1994-2008) and situated them in a broader historical context. Key sources of USDA data include the Foreign Agricultural Service's Global Agricultural Trade System, its official repository for current and historical data on imports, exports and re-exports, and its Production, Supply, and Distribution online database. US export data were queried for agricultural products linked to shifting diet patterns including: corn, soybeans, sugar and sweeteners, consumer-oriented products, and livestock products. The Bureau of Economic Analysis' Balance of Payments and Direct Investment Position Data in their web-based International Economic Accounts system also helped determine changes in US direct investment abroad from 1982 to 2009. Directly and indirectly, the United States has exported increasing amounts of corn, soybeans, sugar, snack foods, and meat products into Mexico over the last two decades. Facilitated by NAFTA, these exports are one important way in which US agriculture and trade policy influences Mexico's food system. Because of significant US agribusiness investment in Mexico across the full spectrum of the latter's food supply chain, from production and processing to distribution and retail, the Mexican food system increasingly looks like the industrialized food system of the United States.
COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, can progress to multisystem organ failure and viral sepsis characterized by respiratory failure, arrhythmias, thromboembolic complications, and ...shock with high mortality. Autopsy and preclinical evidence implicate aberrant complement activation in endothelial injury and organ failure. Erythrocytes express complement receptors and are capable of binding immune complexes; therefore, we investigated complement activation in patients with COVID-19 using erythrocytes as a tool to diagnose complement activation. We discovered enhanced C3b and C4d deposition on erythrocytes in COVID-19 sepsis patients and non-COVID sepsis patients compared with healthy controls, supporting the role of complement in sepsis-associated organ injury. Our data suggest that erythrocytes may contribute to a precision medicine approach to sepsis and have diagnostic value in monitoring complement dysregulation in COVID-19-sepsis and non-COVID sepsis and identifying patients who may benefit from complement targeted therapies.
Agriculture is not just a victim of climate change, but also a major contributor to the problem; commodity value chains are typically highly dependent on fossil-fuels, whether for fertilizers and ...pesticides, or the cold chain used to preserve food across thousands of miles in distribution networks. The expansion of industrial food production through the Green Revolution extracted a steep ecological price in water use and water pollution, biodiversity loss, and a heavy reliance on fossil fuel sourced inputs, including synthetic fertilizers. Agroecology: Transforming the food system of small-scale producers towards food sovereignty In many regions local food system actors responded to changing production and marketing conditions by implementing agroecology, exploring opportunities for developing territorially embedded, equitable and resilient food systems, and building the resilience of farming communities.
Agricultural commodity ‘dumping’ is the practice of exporting commodities at prices below the cost of production. Dumping cheats farmers of a fair return for their work. It cheats both the farmers in ...the USA who are paid below cost, and the farmers abroad whose crops compete with US exports in markets distorted by dumping. And dumping shortchanges the ecosystems upon which humanity depends for its survival. Neo-classical economics holds that when prices are low, suppliers will produce less. The persistence of dumping in the US agricultural commodity sector defies that assumption. In trade circles, where the problem is acknowledged to an extent, dumping is explained as a result of government subsidies. The authors argue that the dumping numbers provided by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy suggest this explanation is at best partial. They look at definitions of dumping, and explanations for how it arises and why it persists, in defiance of expectations that markets are self-correcting.
In attempting a rapprochement between food security and food sovereignty, it is important to understand their full historical contexts. It is also important to note that they are not ‘like’ ...categories. Food security is a normative objective, where food sovereignty is a normative process. The rejection of food security by some food sovereignty writers reflects too narrow an understanding of the rich history of food security and its continuing importance in policy research and analysis as well as in providing direction for food security laws and programmes. Many equate food security with a simplistic insistence on supply to the exclusion of food security’s other dimensions. This is mistaken but should not lead to a rejection of all food security work. Food security and food sovereignty are complementary rather than substitutable terms. Respect for the histories and achievements of both will expand our possibilities for realizing a future free of hunger.
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The multilateral trade system today shapes the economy of almost every country of the world. The World Trade Organization (WTO) now has 160 members, and even the non-members must deal with the rules ...the WTO has established when they trade. The system is ubiquitous yet faces serious challenges. One of these is a challenge that in various guises and for different reasons has been present since it was instituted in 1995: food security. The most recent iteration of the challenge is a fight primarily between the U.S. and India over whether WTO rules should be reformed to accommodate the programmes the Indian government has introduced with its 2013 National Food Security Act (Kripke, this issue). The Indian government is buying food at administered prices from farmers to store and then later distribute through a public distribution system. This fight is important, as a simple scan of the specialist trade press shows. It has implications for all member states seeking to curb domestic food insecurity.
When the G20 took up food security in 2010, many were optimistic that it could bring about positive change by addressing structural problems in commodity markets that were contributing to high and ...volatile food prices and exacerbating hunger. Its members could tighten the regulation of agricultural commodity futures markets, support multilateral trade rules that would better reflect both importer and exporter needs, end renewable fuel targets that diverted land to biofuels production, and coordinate food reserves. In this article, we argue that although the G20 took on food security as a focus area, it missed an important opportunity and has shown that it is not the most appropriate forum for food security policy. Instead of tackling the structural economic dimensions of food security, the G20 chose to promote smoothing and coping measures within the current global economic framework. By shifting the focus away from structural issues, the G20 has had a chilling effect on policy debates in other global food security forums, especially the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS). In addition, the G20 excludes the voices of the least developed countries and civil society, and lacks the expertise and capacity to implement its recommendations.
When the G20 took up food security in 2010, many were optimistic that it could bring about positive change by addressing structural problems in commodity markets that were contributing to high and volatile food prices and exacerbating hunger. Its members could tighten the regulation of agricultural commodity futures markets, support multilateral trade rules that would better reflect both importer and exporter needs, end renewable fuel targets that diverted land to biofuels production, and coordinate food reserves.
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FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, ODKLJ, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
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